Schedules

When Riley was really little, I didn’t try to establish a schedule for him right away. We let him lead and followed his cues for when to feed him and when to let him sleep, which worked well for the first few months. Once he started on solid foods, though, I intervened and crafted a loose schedule for him to follow. This also worked pretty well.

We used to give him a bottle first thing in the morning after he woke up, usually sometime around 6. He would take his first nap before 8 most days and sleep for maybe 40 minutes. I would feed him his breakfast of a bottle, rice cereal, and half of a fruit around 9 and then we would play in his room for a little while before I got him dressed for the day. Then if the timing (and the weather) worked out we would go for a walk.

He would go down for his second nap sometime between 11:30 and noon and sleep for about an hour. He’d have his lunch of a bottle and a whole veggie when he woke up, usually around 1. We would play for another couple of hours, and then he would usually be ready for his third nap between 3 and 3:30. This nap highly varied in length: sometimes he would sleep for less than 30 minutes; sometimes I would have to wake him up at 5. If he didn’t sleep too long we would have outside time again around 4:30 for a half hour or so. He would have his dinner of a whole veggie and the other half of fruit from breakfast around 5:15, and he would be in bed after a bath, a book, and one last bottle around 6:30.

Now that he’s older, Riley and I are kind of tag-teaming things a bit, schedule-wise. When I tried to push him from three naps to two before he was ready (near the end of his eighth month), he rebelled adamantly those two or three days. So I pulled back, let him take the lead once again, and he actually fell into the two-nap schedule all on his own when he was ready. And it seemed to be a very easy transition for him.

After talking with a few of my friends, I decided to change his eating schedule to encourage him to nap longer. We now give him his full breakfast first thing in the morning, which is sometimes a challenge when I’m still bleary-eyed at 6am. (I am not a morning person. Luckily, Kenny is.) He still gets a bottle, rice cereal, and half of a fruit, usually around 6:15. After breakfast, we play. (Now that he’s older, he can stay awake for longer periods of time, which is nice. He can handle being awake for at least three hours now.) Then a little before 9 he gets another bottle before going down for his first nap. I also decided to start giving him his pre-nap bottles in the chair in his room, which I think has helped.

He usually naps for about an hour and a half, sometimes more, in the morning. When he wakes up we play in his room for a little while, and then I get him dressed for the day. He has lunch around 11:30, a bottle and a whole veggie. I am still kind of attempting the sippy cup with him but am getting nowhere with it. He doesn’t have much interest in it at all; in fact, he’s gotten extremely crabby the past few times I’ve tried it.

We play some more until just before 2, when he has another bottle in his room before his second nap. He sleeps for another hour and a half or so. We usually spend some time outside in the late afternoons, which he still loves. (I’m dreading the heat of the summer, though. Is a cool front in the middle of August completely out of Louisiana’s realm???) And he still has dinner around 5:15 and is in bed about an hour later.

This latest schedule is working really well. Of course it doesn’t always go exactly as it’s written, but for the most part we stick to it. Some people may think I’m crazy, but I have found that Riley does really well with consistency, so I am trying to give him that. Now if I could just get him to wake up happy like he used to, everything would be just peachy.

Oh, and I have also realized that my child doesn’t need fancy toys to keep him entertained when he’s not napping or eating:

Who knew that the kitchen sections of Walmart, Target, or Bed, Bath, and Beyond could contain perfectly acceptable (and cheap) toys for my boy?

Thank you, Nola, for lending Riley-bean your plastic measuring cups, tiny whisk, metal tablespoon, and garlic peeler. You’ve certainly scored points!